


With Threshing Oar

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, COME BE HEALED, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Healing, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, King Thor (Marvel), M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Torture, Politics, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Prophetic Dreams, Rebuilding, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, THIS IS A HEALING FIC, and nothing is going to stop them, and we move on from there, basically thor and loki are very sad and have a lot of work to do to move their people forward, but they're going to do it together, just in case you were scared, tags to be updated as the fic progresses, the end credit scene doesn't happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-04-24 21:13:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14363799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Thor and Loki work together to rebuild all their ruins. They take Asgard into the future while navigating their past, internal politics, interrealm relations, that irritating Titan, and the feelings for each other that they can no longer hide.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Heaps of thanks and gratitude to everyone who read bits of this first chapter for me and offered insight/suggestions, and extra special hugs and cookies to incredifishface who took it from "this isn't right why does it suck" to "OH THAT'S WHAT WAS OBVIOUSLY MISSING" and whose ongoing advice and support is invaluable. <3 (this final version of the first chapter is unread by anyone other than me though, so if it sucks it's all my own fault)
> 
> This is likely to be a long one, so buckle up.

Thor came awake all at once, as he always did; some warrior’s instincts never left him, even when he was safe in his own bed. He was surprised though, as he was every time, that only one of his eyes opened. In his dreams he could always see from both.

His brother’s quiet breathing beside him was the only sound in the cabin. It was so sterile here. Thor missed the twitter of birds, the changing light of night giving way to the creeping dawn. Missed the constant murmur of the weather in the back of his mind; the lack of it here in space made him uneasy. The silence seemed fitting though, because these were the few moments a day that Thor set aside for himself and himself only, to look deep into that well of grief that yawned in his chest and acknowledge the enormity of his loss.

If he looked for any longer than a few moments he’d surely drown. Sometimes the thought was tempting, but his people needed him and there was still so much to do.

So he gave himself twelve breaths. One each for his mother, his father, each of his friends, his people, his homeland, his hammer, his eye. The sister he never knew. The brother who slept next to him. Loki’s inclusion seemed strange, but he felt as lost to Thor as the rest of them. And then the last for Thor himself.

After the twelfth breath sighed from his lungs, he shuttered his heart and rose.

He was careful not to disturb Loki.

Loki was turned away from him in sleep, giving Thor a view of the broad side of his back and a fall of gleaming black curls. He was always asleep when Thor got up, or at least pretending to be. Thor never pushed it. This fragile equilibrium they had seemed apt to crumble at the slightest touch and he was happy to leave well enough alone, at least for a little while.

He touched a panel on the wall and a door slid open. Being the King had its perks, one of which was his own private bathroom attached to his cabin, a luxury that no one else on board shared. Thor washed himself field soldier style. He only used enough soap and water to scrub under his arms, his hair, his ass, his genitals. Water was more precious than gold on board a spaceship and he’d not have his people go thirsty just so he could bathe. He brushed his teeth, stared at his hair in mild dismay, and his eye with greater dismay. _I look like father_ , he thought. _I have the **depth perception** of father, and if that isn’t a metaphor_. Loki said the eyepatch suited him though and he had been trying to content himself in that.

Thor came back to the main cabin to get dressed and Loki stirred. One pale arm escaped from the blankets, and the curve of a shoulder with it. His eyes stayed closed. Thor could just make out some of the downy black fuzz peeping out from under Loki’s arm, and if the blanket were to slip an inch lower he might be able to see one rosebud nipple. But Loki was done moving and Thor’s secret desire was denied.

Not for the first time, Thor wondered who this person in his bed was. It had been years since that ruined coronation and so much had happened, and they hadn’t talked about _any_ of it. Not really. He didn’t have time for much rumination though. Heimdall was waiting for him.

Thor’s days were full to the brim now with being King and all that it entailed, and his life was not his own. It belonged to his people, of which there were now far too few. He would have liked to cast blame for that somewhere—Odin for keeping his secrets until his dying breath, Loki for calling the Bifrost and letting Hela into Asgard, Hela for being Hela—but he knew that blame was a coward’s refuge. It was best to walk forward and deal with what already was and what could be, not backward, full of bitterness and blind to what lay ahead. He’d lived too long for anything else.

He found Heimdall on the bridge, staring out into the field of stars.

They’d been on this ship for a week and so far every morning started with a brief from Heimdall on what he had seen since he and Thor spoke last. His presence was a comfort to Thor, one constant at least in the turmoil of his life, and he always looked forward to the company if not the nature of the conversation.

“Any news today?” Thor asked, coming to stand next to Heimdall and looking out with him, crossing his arms over his chest, as though he could see what the watcher did. He saw nothing but blackness broken by pinpoints of light.

“News of the destruction of Asgard has traveled far,” Heimdall said, gaze unwavering. “Old treaties are being called into question. New alliances are forming.”

Thor rubbed the edge of his nose where his eyepatch was irritating him.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Thor said morosely.

“Thanos has turned his eye towards us.”

Thor cursed softly.

“Is he mobilizing?”

“It’s hard to say. The Mad Titan has turned his attention on Asgard before, but…” Heimdall shrugged slightly. “Things are different now than they were.”

“Aye.”

Thor wondered, as he often did, how Odin had managed to keep powerful players like Thanos away from Asgard for so long. What other secrets had Odin been keeping? _Two secrets we know of, and one broke my brother and the other broke the world. It doesn’t inspire much hope._

Thor didn’t think the solution lay in warfare. Asgard’s days as a military power were likely over and Thor knew he needed to find some other way to keep his people safe. Those who remained had watched their entire standing army destroyed by one mad goddess, watched their sons and daughters fall like mayflies, sacrificing their lives in vain, and Asgardians’ memories were long; they would bear the scars of this for millennia.

All the same, though, they should not be completely defenseless.

“How goes the census?” Thor asked. _How many of us are left? What do we have to work with?_

“Vor delivered the final accounting to me this morning,” Heimdall said, voice as careful and measured as ever.

“Vor? Father’s old seneschal?”

“Aye. I think you should read it yourself.”

Heimdall nodded towards a slim stack of papers sitting on the console next to him and Thor picked them up, scanning through the lists. Names, ages, genders, occupations. And there, in fine neat handwriting at the bottom of the last page, a row of numbers and a final tally—the tragedy of the Asgardian people reduced to pitiless arithmetic.

Two thousand, three hundred and seventy two.

Thor’s failure, perfectly quantified.

Sometimes he wondered how his heart had not simply given up beating out of sheer loss. Perhaps if it did, he could parcel out the beats that would have remained to him and bring back those whose time had ended too early.

Thor’s voice was rough when he managed to speak. “Do we have a secretary yet?”

“I believe that Sindri—”

“Good,” Thor said brusquely, cutting him off. “Have him copy out every able-bodied person of fighting age and give the list to Brunnhilde.”

“My King,” Heimdall said. There was a gentle rebuke in his voice, as if Thor were still a boy, though its tone was still deep and even. “You need to start naming your council.”

“I need to talk to Loki.”

Heimdall sighed. “As you wish. You had best do it soon.”

Thor had been putting it off, but he knew that Heimdall was right. His days were madness at the moment; these morning talks were peaceful, but after this the people would start coming to him about absolutely everything—supplies, repairs, accomodations, food, arguments, grievances both petty and major, hopes and fears and anger—and they wouldn’t stop, not until he collapsed into his bed at night from exhaustion. He must name his council and start delegating or risk working himself to death.

But—he did need to talk to Loki about it. And he dreaded talking to Loki about it.

For all that Loki’s time on the throne was ill-gotten, he spent years there and he had political experience that Thor simply didn’t have yet. He knew the cliques, who needed buttering, who was more impressed by shows of strength. Thor had been away for too long and had never paid much attention to that sort of thing anyway.

But it would be a touchy conversation. It couldn’t be anything but. The throne had been a wedge between them from time immemorial, in all the ways that it could have possibly been, and the last time it had come up had been in that field on Earth, where it would have come to blows if not for Hela’s arrival. They’d spoken no word of it since.

Loki didn’t know that Thor wasn’t angry about it anymore. Thor’s temper had always been quick to flare, but much had happened between then and now to cool it, and Thor had had plenty of time to ruminate on that sorcerer Strange’s words— _”Your father was adamant that he not be disturbed. He said he had chosen to remain in exile.”_

Besides, Thor had no time to be angry. He was too tired. And he was too happy to simply see Loki _alive_ and _home_. Besides, Loki always brought out Thor’s worst impulses—one of which was his tendency to love his brother in spite of anything that he did. But Loki had never forgiven or forgotten as easily as Thor, and this conversation—and here Thor heard the echoes of Tony Stark’s voice in his head— _was going to suck_.

Thor stayed with Heimdall for another ten minutes, simply standing next to him and looking out into the universe. Where Heimdall’s gaze rested now Thor didn’t know. Thor’s own gaze was inward for all that his eyes were facing the endlessness of space.

_Tomorrow_ , Thor finally decided. _I’ll talk to Loki tomorrow._ Today would have been better, but Thor was half afraid that after this conversation he’d not have Loki in his bed again and he needed at least one more night of this wordless comfort before he possibly shattered it.

—o—

Thor’s day as King lasted well into the night, like usual, and he dragged himself back to his cabin with a headache and the faint nausea of going too long without a proper meal. Loki was asleep in the bed already. He frequently got in before Thor did, and the lump under the covers had grown to be a familiar sight.

The bedsharing had started the night that Loki showed up in his cabin. _“I’m here,”_ Loki had said, and then they were hugging with a fierceness bordering on desperation, and then Thor had poured a second tumbler of spirits and they’d ended up getting completely shitfaced together until they passed out on the floor. Thor had woken up at some point several bleary hours later and dragged both of their stinking carcasses into the bed, and as far as he could figure Loki had never left it.

They didn’t speak about it, like they didn’t speak about many things. Thor liked to think that Loki needed this as much as he did, and that they stayed silent in an effort to not cock things up so completely that they ended up spending the rest of this miserable trip to Earth even lonelier than they both were already.

Which was pretty damned lonely.

Tonight, Thor stripped down naked but for the soft shorts he wore under his armor, popped off his eyepatch with a grimace, and sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped slightly under his weight, shifting the sleeping body on the other side. Soft diffuse light from the floor cast Loki’s features in delicate blue. It felt like a secret being exposed. Thor wondered if Loki might ever let him see his skin blue in truth. He would like to see that but he knew that to ask directly would be the surest way to be denied it.

He stared at the sharpness of Loki’s jaw, the arch of his cheekbones, the fluttering of his eyes beneath his eyelids. His features were slightly softer in sleep, his brow not as pinched. _If I were a sculptor_ , Thor decided, _his is the face I would carve over and over again_. He would painstakingly detail its every permutation, setting them all down in stone that everyone might know the beauty of his brother’s face. He would record it in sleep, yes, and also anger and laughter, wonder and sadness, concentration, joy. Passion.

Thor knew all these expressions save the last, and he wished to know that one too.

Even after everything. Maybe because of everything.

Loki was turned away from him. Thor settled himself under the covers on his side facing Loki’s back, and tonight he was close enough that his nose brushed Loki’s hair. Loki’s scent was as it had ever been, which was _green_ , like mint and anise and unripe lemon, edged with bitter streaks of wormwood. Perhaps the color had chosen him rather than the other way around. Thor inhaled deeply and it smelled like a thousand summers spent together, braiding each other’s hair away from their faces, like sunlight and laughter and mischief.

Some compulsion tonight had Thor reaching his hand up to skim across Loki’s curls and then rest on his upper arm, cupping the curve of his bicep. Loki stirred and pressed into the touch. Emboldened, Thor buried his nose further into his brother’s hair and squeezed his arm briefly.

Then, exhausted, he too fell into sleep.

He dreamed. Even the dream was green.

Thor and Loki were cradled in soft high grass, and it reached up around them in a jumble of slender stalks to fragment the sky into sapphire shards and cast them in lines of shadow. It felt like a nest, or a luminous green cave, and it was cool and damp and smelled like sweet new earth and the fragile white roots of wildflowers. Thor turned to embrace his brother. His fingers began to grow into vines. They twined around Loki’s arms, his ribs, wrapped around his neck with a lover’s touch. Loki’s fingers were doing the same, ensnaring Thor as surely as he was being ensnared, until they were completely grown together, inextricably tangled, and their veins ran with sap and their hearts pushed insistent roots out through their ribs. Loki kissed him. At the touch of their lips every leaf and flowerbud furled along their bodies burst open at once, cocooning them in a transient explosion of color.

Thor woke happy and achingly sad at the same time, and he had Loki clutched to his breast.

His arm had stolen around Loki’s side in their sleep, his hand was planted firmly in the center of Loki’s chest, and one of his legs was hitched around Loki’s thighs; Loki was as thoroughly spooned as it was possible to be.

And he was awake. Thor knew he was awake from his breathing. But he made no move, made no sound.

Thor exhaled softly and remained where he was.

For whatever reason, this dream had borne the whiff of prophecy; Thor recognized it as clearly as he had recognized his dreams of Ragnarok. Surely it was not simply prophesying the way Thor was wrapped around his brother right now.

Wordlessly, Loki’s palm came up to press against the back of Thor’s hand and weave their fingers together.

It took Thor a long time to fall back asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for your lovely comments on the first chapter, I'm so sorry the second one has taken so long but I hope you enjoy <3
> 
> thanks once again to the incomparable thebookhunter/incredifishface without whose help this fic would be dead in the water <3

Loki slipped out before Thor awoke. The corridors were mostly empty but he hid himself anyway. It was easy enough to take the form of a tiny snake, a handspan long, and wriggle into the vents. He didn’t change back into himself until he was safely inside the Commodore; the ship that Loki himself flew to the palace to trigger Ragnarok felt as much “his” as anything in this floating mausoleum did.

This was where he had been taking himself this last week when he wished to be alone.

This last, interminable, excruciating week.

Loki shimmered back into himself and locked himself in the Commodore’s washroom. He scrubbed himself and scrubbed and scrubbed, but he felt no cleaner for it. As always, the last five, ten, maybe fifty years of his life clung to him like heavy river clay, smothering him, covering him in choking mud. The weight of it felt unbearable sometimes. He could still feel Thor’s hand on his chest. That didn’t scrub away either.

Sighing, Loki retreated to one of the private quarters on the ship. With a small gesture he created a double of himself. He made it stand stock still in the center of the room, arms at its sides, eyes straight ahead. Naked.

He studied himself.

This had always been more useful to him than a mirror. Mirrors were two dimensional. They distorted and reflected instead of showing the true nature of a thing. They lied.

Loki smirked and his double smirked with him. He scowled and it scowled. He raised his right arm and wiggled his fingers and the double did as well.

Satisfied that his double was copying his every movement, he closed his eyes and relived last night. He felt once more the hot press of his brother’s body against his own, let himself experience the feelings all over again—the panic as he woke, the way he’d remained completely frozen waiting for the sick crawling feeling that always accompanied physical touch ever since his time between the worlds (banished the memory of pale eyes in a purple face, stuffed it back down)—and then, how that sickening feeling had never come. Instead, Thor’s thigh heavy on his hip, their fingers tangled together at Loki’s breast, their tense bodies relaxing into each other—the snarled ugly knot that lived in Loki’s chest loosening just that tiny bit—the feeling of warmth and safety and...relief.

When Loki opened his eyes again, slightly short of breath and just on the edge of shakiness, he read the expression on his double’s face. He wanted to see what Thor had done to him.

Loki didn’t even recognize himself. His double still had its eyes closed. Its brows were drawn up and its face was pathetically open. Loki saw relief there, yes, and also neediness and...something else. Something he wasn’t used to seeing and was too skittish to name right away. His thoughts shied away from it.

Thinking maybe the light was tricking him, Loki conjured a witchlight to hold next to his double’s face, moved it around to study himself from every angle. But no, it was no trick of the light, and there was no sense in further denying it. His double's face held vulnerability and _want_ , written plainly for anyone with eyes to see. He looked down to steady himself and briefly saw that his double's cock had thickened against its leg. Before his eyes could linger, and with a wordless noise of disgust and dismay, he banished the doppelganger completely.

What had Loki been thinking, allowing himself the indulgence of sharing Thor’s bed? What had Thor been thinking, spooning up to him like that? Had Thor been awake or asleep? Did it matter? Neither one of them had made any move to disentangle themselves afterwards.

He had thought that he’d laid this ridiculous obsession with his brother to rest long ago, mastered his chattering libido, but apparently he was wrong yet again. He supposed he should be used to it by now.

Loki felt his thoughts start to run in circles, which would be of no use to him at all, so he firmly banished the entire thing to the back of his mind along with all the other things he didn’t want to think about. It was getting rather crowded back there. But at least this way he could remain functional, if on edge, and he was sure he had enough room for at least one or two more calamities before he lost it completely.

He finished dressing, all black as had been his custom lately. It made him feel somewhat better to wrap himself up in armor from head to toe. More in control. Less like an insect on its back, wriggling legs and tender underbelly exposed. He practiced his steely look in the mirror for a moment. Not all armor was physical.

Satisfied that he looked put-together, Loki left the sanctuary of the Commodore to go face the day.

—o—

Sindri caught up with Loki as he was leaving the mess hall. Loki recognized the lad from the palace; he had worked in the library, a place Loki had spent a fair amount of his time.

“The King wishes to see you,” Sindri said, fidgeting, not quite daring to meet Loki’s eyes. He wasn’t the only one. No one knew what to make of Loki right now. He was trickster, usurper, and savior all in one and it was probably only Thor’s unwavering personal support that kept people from doing more than mutter and look away from him.

Being Odin had been so easy in comparison. Loki missed it. The weight of being himself again was oppressive.

“Of course,” Loki said. “Now?”

“If it pleases you, my lord.” More fidgeting, tugging nervously at the hem of a tunic.

That was a yes, then.

“I won’t bite you,” Loki said. “Despite rumors to the contrary.”

Sindri all but fled and Loki sighed to himself. Foolishly, he had believed that he could perhaps avoid this thing that had happened last night. But here Thor was, undoubtedly wanting to _talk_ about it, not content to leave well enough alone, sending people to publicly collect him. Perhaps Thor knew that if he tried to simply corner Loki privately that he’d never find him.

Hiding, avoiding, deflecting. These were, after all, Loki’s specialties, for all the good they’d done him. He wouldn’t jeopardize his public standing with Thor though, so he’d answer this summons.

Thor was waiting for him on the observation deck. He must have sent Heimdall away, for he was alone. The deck had been empty for the week that they’d called this ship home, but now there was a long table running down the center of it, ringed by empty chairs. A bottle of spirits sat near the edge of the table, as green as Loki’s old cloak, as green as his envy, and two glasses next to it.

Thor didn’t wish to approach this sober, then. Loki couldn’t say he blamed him.

He joined his brother at the window, and they stared out into the depths of space side by side.

 _Courage_ , Loki chided himself. _It’s only Thor._

“Done a bit of redecorating?” Loki asked lightly.

“The room was a bit spare for my tastes.”

“You always did have an eye towards interior decorating. I’m only surprised at the lack of gold.”

“Yes, well, I was fresh out unfortunately.”

The conversation was shallow, useless. It made Loki’s teeth itch.

“It’s actually why I’ve asked you here,” Thor said, and Loki blinked in surprise. Thor turned away from the window and poured them each a drink. He held both glasses out towards Loki and automatically Loki reached out and chilled them, frost blooming under his fingertips to crawl down the sides of the glass. He took his from Thor and brought it to his lips. It burned going down and left a lingering aftertaste of bitter herbs.

“I don’t know if I follow,” Loki said. He did follow, actually, the table was a dead giveaway, but if there was one conversation that he wanted to have even less than the one about their nocturnal activities, this was it. His belly was a nest of snakes.

“I need a council,” Thor was saying. “I need your help choosing it.”

“Never one for small talk, were you?”

“Neither are you.”

“My darling brother, I _adore_ small talk.” Loki took another sip, and grimaced as it went down.

“It suits your purposes most of the time, but you hate it as much as I do,” Thor said, ever astute. “But come, sit with me. Help me fill these chairs.”

“What do you need my help for?” Loki said. He was stalling now and he hated himself for it.

“You’ve always had a better mind for politics than I have,” Thor said, pulling one of the chairs out and sprawling back in it. A show of nonchalance. Loki had known Thor his entire life though and he saw small tells that Thor was nervous. One shoulder a fraction higher than the other. A crinkle at the corner of his mouth. His thumb running along the edge of his middle fingernail. “And you keep up with whispers. Besides, I’ve been away too long.”

“And whose fault is that?” Loki said sharply. He set his glass down a bit too forcefully and some of his drink went over the edge.

“You didn’t exactly stop me when I went off searching,” Thor pointed out, far too reasonably. He gave Loki a look that was part reproach and part fond exasperation. It would almost be better if he were angry. “Besides,” Thor was continuing, “you’ve actually been the King. Twice. I haven’t.”

Loki couldn’t help it, he laughed, though there was no humor in it.

“Oh, so we’re admitting it now? That I was the King? Not some ill-gotten usurper?”

“Loki,” Thor sighed. “I don’t want to get into the morality or the legality of it right now. The fact is that you were the acting King.”

“Yes, just immorally and illegally.”

Thor sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed at the edge of his eyepatch. “Do you really want to get into this right now?”

“Do I? I don’t know. Do you?”

Internally, Loki was screaming at himself to shut up, but he couldn’t seem to listen to his own good advice. He was feeling so off balance after last night and this morning, and now _this_. Thor was taking him by the scruff of the neck like a puppy who’d just soiled the rug and forcing his nose into the mess he’d made. Loki didn’t want to face it, just wanted to spit verbal venom and make his large golden brother _go away_ and let him break down in peace. _No_ , said the other part of him, the wicked poisonous part, _You already made Thor leave you once, if you make him do it again he’ll never take you back._

It was crawling out of him now, though, Loki could feel it. It was slithering up from the depths he’d shoved it down into, one of the many grievances he’d been putting off facing, and before he knew what he was doing it was spilling out of his mouth in a rush.

“Am I to name your council, then? Me? The impersonator? Shall I name the people I fooled, or the ones I never did manage to hoodwink completely? What about the ones I had to crush completely to get away with my _nefarious scheme?_ Or the ones who just pretended to go along with it because it was easier than fighting and their pockets remained fat either way? I have many enemies and no friends anymore, none save you, and no matter who I tell you to name my words will be poison. And people will know I’ve had a hand in it and no one will trust you. You’ll be tarnished by association. Is that what you want? Is it?”

Thor had just been regarding him calmly this whole time saying nothing, but he was still rubbing a groove into his thumb with his fingernail. Loki wanted to shake him.

“Are you finished?” Thor asked.

Loki threw his hands up, whirled, and stalked over to the window. He stared out sightlessly into space.

“I know that the politics of ruling are...complicated,” Thor said behind him. “But anyone who would fault me for keeping you as my advisor is no friend of mine.”

“They don’t need to be your _friends_ ,” Loki spat. “They just need to be loyal to their King. And my presence will do nothing but harm.”

“You give yourself too little credit.”

“I give myself precisely the credit that I’m due. I never actually _wanted_ to rule, you know. It was just…” Loki trailed off, then finished softly, “...it was the only thing I could think of at the time.” His reflection in the window looked small and wan. He wondered if Thor was looking at it.

“The only...what?” Thor sounded actually surprised, and Loki marked down one mental point for himself. Thor had accused him of predictability but it seemed that Loki could still stymie him every once in awhile.

“Why did you think I did it?” Loki asked bitterly. “I told you I never wanted the throne and I meant it.”

“I don’t know...there’s been so much happening, I haven’t had the time to think…”

“ _Thanos_ ,” Loki hissed, voice thin and tight.

“Oh.”

Loki could hear the pieces slotting into place in his brother’s mind.

“I was safe enough in prison under the Allfather’s watchful eye, but then—”

“I broke you out.”

“Yes.”

“And now I’ve outed you again,” Thor said. His voice sounded odd. Loki wanted to turn and look at him, see what emotions might be written on his face, but he couldn’t bear it. One of Loki’s many shoved-aside secrets was twisting horribly in the back of his mind, glowing sickly blue, but he had already said so much today and he wouldn’t let this one out. Not yet. He couldn’t.

He’d always been weak.

“But you came back to me anyway,” Thor continued. “Brother.”

Loki’s heart spasmed inside the cage he’d fashioned for it. It was such a tender thing, easily bruised. It yearned to reach out for his brother even now.

“I did,” Loki whispered. He didn’t even know if Thor could hear him.

“I’m an idiot,” Thor said. “An idiot and a fool. I should have realized...Heimdall spoke to me yesterday. He told me that Thanos has turned his eye towards us.”

Loki felt run through. His stomach dropped to his feet.

“I’ll go,” he said immediately, nauseous. He clutched his gut, felt sweat start to bead his upper lip. “He’s coming for me. I’ll go, spare you all—” His vision had narrowed and blindly he started making his way toward the door. Muttering. “Norns, I thought I had more time—”

There were huge hands gripping Loki’s upper arms, hauling him around, pulling him against a warm broad chest.

“Let me go.” Loki struggled against the arms encircling him. “I need to go, I need to—”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Thor said firmly, tightening his hold on Loki until finally Loki ceased his fruitless endeavor and let his head fall against Thor, pressing his forehead into the crook of his neck. “Breathe,” Thor said helpfully, and Loki pinched his arm in punishment. “Whatever threat there is, we’ll face it together.”

“You don’t know what he’s like.”

“Together,” Thor said firmly.

Loki wanted to cry. He remembered letting go of Gungnir. He remembered a year of white-walled silence followed by a blade erupting from his chest on Svartalfheim. He remembered Thor affixing an obedience disk to him and leaving him convulsing on the floor while Thor abandoned him.

_We’ll face it together._

“We’ll all die.”

“No we won’t.” Thor sounded so confident, so assured. That was the way of Thor. He wished a thing to be so, therefore so it must be. The universe would unmake itself and reform into the outcome that Thor desired, for even something so vast and impersonal as reality couldn’t help but bow to such worthiness. Loki was no exception. He felt Thor’s words settle into him, and, damnably, make hope start to bloom where none was before.

It was folly.

Loki held Thor tight to him, because Thor started it and Thor was holding him back and in this moment Loki was permitted. His glowing secret was clawing at the back of his throat and he gritted his teeth.

Thor turned his head just slightly and kissed Loki’s temple. It made him tremble.

Thor was thinking the same things as Loki, or near enough to it, for he said, “All has not been well between us, probably for longer than I had realized, but...I’m glad you’re here. That we’re together now. That maybe...we might heal what’s been broken between us. I don’t want to be apart from you again, brother. Every cell of my body hates it.”

Thor kissed his temple again and stroked his hair. That Loki was still embracing Thor was answer enough to Thor’s confession, and Loki was glad of it, for he couldn’t speak without dissolving right now.

They stood like that for long moments, locked together, until composure returned to both of them and finally with small sighs they broke apart.

“Ready to help me with my council now?” Thor murmured, looking up at Loki with a hopeful expression on his face.

Loki smacked him on the chest, then pulled out a chair and drained the rest of his drink in one pull. “Sit down, then,” Loki said. “And let me gossip your ear off.”


	3. Chapter 3

It had been a long time since Thor had simply sat down and talked with his brother for any length of time. This wasn’t the conversation he might have chosen to be their first, but this was the one the Norns had allowed, so he shunted aside the sick nervous flutter in his gut and tried to give his brother his full attention. Loki’s gossip was the best kind of intel, for his insights were as cutting as they were apt, and revealed much about the people and situations in question. Thor let Loki do much of the talking and his low deep voice washed over and through Thor like the comfortable lapping of waves.

In the past, Loki had often regaled Thor with similar political talk—he’d sprawl in one of Thor’s armchairs with a bottle of wine after dinner, going on about the machinations of the court. Thor had found it tiresome then. He would polish and inspect his armor while letting Loki drone on, or dive into a bottle of his own, or sometimes simply annoy Loki on purpose until he either changed topics or left in a huff. Thor probably ought to have paid more attention back then, or at least appreciated Loki’s time and company—but wisdom was a benefit of age and some things were only clear in hindsight. Besides, who could have predicted the dire present they found themselves in now?

It did make this conversation feel familiar, at least, and Thor found himself beginning to relax into it marginally as they talked. Almost like the old days, and that the intervening years hadn’t happened.

Although they had, of course. It was foolish of Thor to let himself forget, even for a few moments.

Surprisingly, it was Heimdall who turned out to be the sticking point.

They were running through the tentative list of names they’d come up with and Thor brought up Heimdall offhandedly, not thinking much of it, already starting to write it down—”And Heimdall, of course”—and Loki cut him off mid sentence.

“No,” Loki said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

Thor dropped the pen and sat back in his chair, his brow furrowed, at a loss. What objection could Loki possibly have to Heimdall, of all people? The man was practically their uncle. He rubbed at the edge of his eyepatch.

“Heimdall’s counsel has always been invaluable,” Thor said. “He’s been the watcher since before father was King. The people trust him. I trust him.”

Loki scoffed. He began rapping his knuckles on the table, agitated.

“He commits treason _for_ you,” Loki said, “but _against_ me. He turned traitor under me twice rather than serve me.”

“I hardly think—”

“If we’re both on the council I think it will go very poorly.”

Thor sighed. Loki’s ability to hold grudges was legendary, but at least now his objection to Heimdall made sense. “Without him we wouldn’t even have any people left to lead. And he’s a good friend—”

Loki slammed his fist down on the table and scowled. “Will you stop going on about _friends_? This is the Kinghood, not a social club.”

It irritated Thor more than it should. There were scant thousands of them left. If he could not be King and friend both, then what was the point of any of it? He would not cast Heimdall aside for one of his brother’s petty grudges. And Thor was still rattled from earlier, though he’d been trying not to show it, and his words came out sharply.

“And now it belongs to me and not you, and I say Heimdall stays.”

It was true but it wasn’t the right thing to say, and Thor knew it, knew it as he was saying it, but couldn’t stop himself anyway.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to pull rank on me,” Loki said, his voice deceptively calm. “And now I know.” He stood swiftly, his cape falling around his ankles, his mouth a tight line. “I’ll leave you to it, then, since obviously you don’t actually need my input.”

“Loki—”

But Loki was already leaving the room in a swirl of black, nothing left of his presence but an empty glass upon the table, a whiff of his green scent upon the air, and the dull ache gripping Thor’s insides.

Thor scrubbed at his beard and put the heel of his palm over his good eye and rubbed it until he saw colors burst. That hadn’t gone as badly as it could have, but it hadn’t gone as well as it could have either. Thor felt tired, and sad, and guilty for a great many things, only some of which he should.

The thing looming largest in his mind, the thing putting him on edge, was Loki’s reaction to the news of Thanos. Loki had been his usual prickly self before that, but at the mere mention of Thanos’s attention he’d gone white and shaky in fear. It was as close to full blown panic as Thor had ever seen him, and such a far cry from the cheerful insouciance that Loki usually showed in the face of danger, even mortal danger, that Thor felt something akin to panic himself. Not about the possibility of facing the Mad Titan—Thor was never nervous about combat, for the blood of his forefathers flowed through his veins and the idea of death in combat was a comfort rather than a curse—but about what exactly had happened to Loki after he’d fallen from the Bifrost. What had Thanos done to Loki to make him crack so openly at the mere mention of his name? What horrors had been inflicted? Thor's imagination was supplying possible scenarios, each more horrifying than the last, and in every one of them Loki was the devastated and broken thing who'd let go of Gungnir and in every one of them Thor was not there. It made him heartsick and it clogged his throat with guilt and grief.

Thor could still feel Loki's arms tight around him and the desperation with which he'd clung. Loki should have been knifing him in the ribs for what Thor had done by exposing his disguise, not hugging him. Not helping him.

And Thor couldn’t even rein his tongue in long enough to finish a civil conversation. Fine compensation.

Thor took his list of names and folded it up and slipped it into his pocket. He’d go after Loki but he was positive that Loki would be unable to be found (at least for a little while), and there was still much work to do today, and not enough time to do it in. So he squared his shoulders and put on his cheerful face and went out to try the best he could.

*

Loki stalked down the corridor, angry at himself.

He was angry that he’d lost his composure at the beginning of his and Thor’s meeting, and then that he had let his fear of Thanos show so nakedly. Angry that Thor had suggested Heimdall for the council and that Loki’s reaction had given so much of his shame away—for that was the real reason he doesn’t want Heimdall around, though he’d never say as much. It was Loki encasing Heimdall in ice, and trying to arrest him and failing, and that the people loved him far better than they had ever loved Loki, and that Heimdall loved Thor. Loki could not sit in the same room as Heimdall and meet his golden gaze without the shame threatening to eat him alive.

Loki’s irritation at Thor was so secondary as to be nearly meaningless right now, although maybe he’d have a nice stew about it later. It could be a distraction from everything else. Being irritated at his brother was one of the few constants in Loki’s life; it was almost a comfort.

Part of him wanted to just take the Commodore and go. He knew that this strange truce he and Thor have couldn’t last. It would be better to leave of his own volition and with his pride intact than wait to be cast out. And cast out he would definitely be once Thor found out that Loki took the Tesseract from the vault, especially now that Thanos was looking for them. Loki wouldn’t even blame Thor for doing it. 

Loki made it all the way to the hangar where the Commodore was docked. He went inside the ship, checked all the systems, the fuel. Everything appeared to be in order. He ran his hand over the console.

If he left now, where would he go? Find another trash planet, another Sakaar to try and climb to the top of? The thought sent a shudder through him and he shook his head. His skin crawled. Once was bad enough. The things he’d had to do…and all while thinking that Asgard was surely destroyed, that Thor was dead…

_Thor._

Loki’s finger traced the edge of a button and his eyes fell shut. His other hand stole up to his own chest, pressed over his heart. He could feel Thor wrapped around him the way he was last night and his hand tightened into a fist. With a sigh of dismay, Loki knew that as long as there was the smallest chance that it might happen again that he wasn’t going anywhere at all.

*

Not wanting to chance running into Thor again during “daylight” hours, Loki flitted about the ship, half entertaining himself and half making himself useful. As a snake in the vents, he listened in on conversations, gathering whispers. As himself, he started a few whispers of his own. He wasn’t universally trusted, to be sure, but he wasn’t universally despised either, and there was more than one person willing to lend him an ear. It wasn’t as though his time on the throne had been an unhappy one for Asgard’s people, after all.

Some of his rumors were intended to suss out loyalties. Some were just for fun. And some—well, some were purely selfish. Rehab for his image. Loki did love to be loved, as hard as he found it to accept affection. He managed to wile away the entire day thusly. Keep his brain occupied.

But as the time for sleep approached, Loki found himself growing increasingly uneasy. He’d slept in Thor’s bed every night since he came back and for the first time he was unsure about his welcome. Not because they’d butted heads slightly—that was truly nothing new—but because of what had happened last night. And how they hadn’t talked about it. And how he was afraid that now Thor _will_ want to talk about it. This was a new game they were playing, and Loki didn’t know if he was ready for it; the old one had suited him just fine. 

_We’re the living embodiment of the principle of uncertainty_ , Loki thought. _To try and take our measure will only alter our position._

Loki hadn’t realized just how much his flesh had been starving for touch, for intimacy, but now that he’d tasted it the strength of his need for it was overwhelming. He _needed_ these nights, needed them not to change. It filled him with self-loathing to need anything so much, but the terror of losing it was greater.

So he tried to go back to their cabin early; Thor was almost always out late, and if Loki was already sleeping when he got in, then they couldn’t talk about anything at all. It was a tactic he’d used before.

Unfortunately, Thor’s duties had either ended exceedingly early or he’d had the same idea.

He was stripping for bed when Loki entered the room and Loki arrived just in time to watch Thor pull his chest armor off over his head, watch the muscles in his belly and chest tense and shift, the way his nipples hardened instantly in the cool air. Loki was ashamed to look but he did it anyway.

“Loki!” Thor said when he emerged from the mass of black leather. Loki was frozen in the doorway, cursing himself. His stomach curdled at the surprise in Thor’s voice. Had Thor not been expecting him to show up tonight? Had Thor just assumed that whatever-it-was last night didn’t need talking about because Loki would have better sense than to come back?

“I’ll just—I’ll just go.” Loki was already turning to leave but Thor caught him by the hand.

“And sleep where?” Thor said gently.

“Anywhere else,” Loki said to the floor.

“Stop being an idiot and come to bed.”

Thor dropped Loki’s hand and was already settling himself under the covers. Loki dared to look over at him. Thor took his eyepatch off, set it on the bedstand—the nakedness of his scar on full display here in the privacy of their cabin. Fluffed his pillow. Looked over at Loki and patted the spot next to him.

“Well?”

Would Loki always come when Thor beckoned? Silently, internally trembling but trying not to show it, Loki stripped too, down to his shorts. Thor still wasn’t saying anything either. Loki hit the light and laid down stiffly next to Thor in the bed.

 _Don’t talk_ , Loki pleaded. _Don’t talk, don’t talk_.

“Goodnight,” Thor said.

“Goodnight,” Loki whispered.

Thor was on his side turned towards Loki, and Loki turned on his side away from Thor; there was only so much he could bear, and lying in bed trying not to watch his brother’s face to see if it was watching his was far too much. He felt Thor shift behind him, and then a large warm arm draped itself over his side. Loki let out a breath that almost, but not quite, had voice. He was still tense, but _gods_ , this was so much more than he had hoped for. It was so much to process that it didn’t even occur to him to try and figure out this entire situation from Thor’s point of view; Loki was simply existing, here in the dark, his brother’s arm around him, comforting and heavy, anchoring. Loki was breathing, and he was with Thor, and Thor was holding him. 

The first time may have been an accident, but this time was on purpose.

Thor was _holding him_.

And he hadn’t made Loki talk about it, hadn’t made him either deny that he wanted it, or, gods forbid, _ask_ for it. And maybe...Thor wanted it too.

It was a balm on a wound so old that Loki didn’t even know when he’d acquired it.

Loki finally felt Thor drop off to sleep behind him and allowed himself to relax. Things weren’t _well_ between them, exactly, but they were as close to it as they’d been in nearly two decades. And this? This, he wanted to keep for as long as he could.

Because once the truth of Loki’s betrayal came out it would all fall apart.

It had all happened before. It would all happen again.

It was a little death every time, and Loki knew more about dying than most.

This time, he’d rather live.


	4. Chapter 4

Loki can’t move, locked in place by his own muscles turned against him— _they_ have allowed him the barest fraction of an inch to inflate his lungs but it’s not enough, he can’t get enough breath, and he’s panicking but that only makes it worse—”Again,” says the voice, high and gentle. It would be a comforting sounding voice if Loki didn’t know the dark and twisted heart of the being it belongs to; as it is, the incongruity only makes it even more sinister. “No,” Loki says—tries to say—he can’t because his tongue and his lips won’t move, and he can hardly even push the air past his voicebox. ”It will be easier,” the voice says, “if you stop resisting. Again.” And then the world is yellow and Loki’s body is on fire and he screams and he tries to get away, he tries, but he can’t move, he can’t move, he can’t—and the voice is _there_ , inside his mind, scrambling it all around, picking it apart, sifting through it mercilessly like a child through a toybox and “No,” Loki whimpers or at least imagines he whimpers, “nonononononono—”

Loki bolted upright in bed in a cold sweat, gasping. His heart knocked harshly against his ribs.

Thor sat up next to him and reached for him, and Loki cowered away, curling in on himself.

“No,” Loki said, moaned really, his negation finally given voice, and it was a relief to hear it despite the wretchedness of it. “I’m fine. I don’t—I don’t need—”

He didn’t even bother trying to finish his sentence.

“You’re shaking,” Thor said, all sleepy concern. He reached for Loki again and his hand was hot on Loki’s arm. He was pulling Loki to him and, unable to resist, Loki went.

Loki wanted to vomit. He wanted to turn into smoke and blow away. He wanted no one to ever touch him again.

He wanted Thor to never stop touching him.

Sagging against Thor’s chest, Loki closed his eyes and let the feeling of his brother’s gentle hands stroking his back chase the remnants of the nightmare away. No, not a nightmare. A memory. It was one that Loki had managed not to think of explicitly in years. Talking about Thanos must have dredged it back up. 

Loki hugged himself, cupping his own elbows, and Thor’s arms encircled him completely. The panic began to settle and Loki was left with a dull sort of misery. It was unfair, really, that Thor’s physical affections were so freely given—to friends, children, animals, sniveling little brothers—and yet that Loki held each touch so dear. They should hold little currency, common as they were; the exchange rate was exceedingly lopsided. Loki soaked them up all the same.

“Come back to bed?” Thor asked softly after the worst of Loki’s shakes subsided.

Loki nodded. He almost wished that Thor was mocking him, or prying. It would be familiar. Loki would know how to react. Instead, Loki felt like he'd lost his footing and didn’t know which way to step to right himself. Thor had always loved him, Loki knew, but this tenderness and understanding was new. This new Thor was still _Thor_ , but the brash arrogant prince that Loki knew before, the one who _would_ have mocked and pried, had been reforged and tempered by the fires of Ragnarok into something slightly different. Better, perhaps.

Loki himself did not feel reforged. He felt shattered, and like he’d been put back together all wrong. A golem made of mismatched pieces, held together by sheer force of will.

Thor kissed Loki's temple again, the way he’d done in the council room, and again it made Loki tremble. Loki tilted his face towards Thor for a moment, looking up at him. Their gazes met. It was startlingly intimate and it felt significant somehow. Like maybe Loki was trying to tell Thor something with just his face and his eyes, though he didn’t even know what it was he was trying to say. Maybe ‘thank you’ or ‘I'm sorry I'm like this’, or just ‘I'm here.’ He could swear that Thor stared at his lips for a moment before giving him a squeeze and lying them both back down.

Loki wanted to curl into Thor’s chest. He didn’t know if he was allowed to do that, even under the guise of purely brotherly affection. What they were doing was...well, what _were_ they doing? It wasn’t as though they’d never had to share sleeping quarters before, or that they’d never hugged before, or even that Thor had never comforted Loki after a nightmare before. But this was...

It felt different.

It felt dangerously close to something that brothers shouldn’t do.

At least from Loki’s vantage point it did, though his perspective might have been skewed; there has been a part of him that has hungered for his brother for many long centuries. He’d always been able to push that part of himself aside though, bury it as deep as he could get it—scared that if he gave it an inch that it would consume him. Consume both of them.

Some mad part of him wanted to give in and let it. See how brightly they could flame before they burned to ash.

Thor put his hand on Loki’s arm, lightly. It could have just been a fond caress before he rolled over to go back to sleep; it could have been a prelude to another full body hug. Trust Thor to know how to ask a question without saying a word.

Loki answered it. He covered Thor’s hand with his own, then shuddered out a sigh as Thor pulled him closer and wrapped him up in his arms.

His sleep was deep and dreamless the rest of the night.

*

The first council meeting went reasonably well. Thor headed it up with Loki on his righthand side, his second in command. Thor appreciated the symbolic gesture of his brother taking on the area that Thor himself couldn’t see. There was a bit of bickering, of course, and some pointed looks in Loki’s direction along with comments bordering on insubordination, and a fair bit of the councillors trying to size each other up without looking like that was what they were doing, but all in all they made a good bit of headway on the things that needed to be done. Establishing the chain of command, forming committees for everything from choosing a quartermaster to starting to draft a new codex of law, settling on a course to Earth, deciding which old debts could be called in and which couldn’t, reforming the military, and on and on.

Thor didn’t bring up Thanos. For now it seemed prudent to keep it between him and Loki and Heimdall, and whoever ended up as their new general. There was no need to cause any panic when it was nothing but vague rumblings in the distance.

In the beginning of the meeting Thor tried to keep his hands busy so he wouldn’t fidget at where Mjolnir used to hang on his belt, and Loki’s calculated nonchalance belied the fact that he was wound tighter than a spring, but it didn’t take them long to start settling into their roles. Into a rhythm, really. It was almost like the choreography of a good fight—balancing the offensive with the defensive, watching each other’s blind spots, stepping in where the other was faltering. They’d done that so many times they could practically do it sleepwalking.

And, just like on Sakaar, it felt _so good_ to be working in tandem like this.

Thor found himself filling with a growing warmth. Loki was alive, and he was back, and they were working together—at least for the moment—and the current situation was still devastating but they were facing it side-by-side. As they always should have been. And seeing Loki like this, as the man who’d been actually leading their people for the past few years, filled Thor with an odd sort of pride, despite how Loki got there.

Thor called the meeting to a close. He stood at the window as the councillors filed out, staring out past his reflection into the abyss of space. Loki joined him, on the left side this time, and Thor was grateful for it; he could see him this way without having to twist his entire body.

“That wasn’t nearly as hateful as it could have been,” Loki said. He sounded positively cheerful. “It was actually nice being able to fob them off on you instead of dealing with them all myself.”

Thor laughed. “You were right about Calder though. He’s a right asshole, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Loki sighed. “But a better Master of Coin I’ve never met. Just make sure you keep both eyes on him.”

“I’ve only got the one,” Thor deadpanned. He was rewarded with one of Loki’s involuntary true, small smiles—tight-lipped and gone as quick as they came, and dear for how rare they were. Thor had always found it puzzling that Loki’s fake smiles were so wide and his real ones so contained. Hiding his joy had never been something that Thor had any compulsion to do; why his brother should feel the need was beyond Thor’s ability to fully comprehend.

They stood in companionable silence for a moment. Loki crossed his hands in front of him.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to go back to Earth?” Loki said finally, his tone serious.

Thor was still in a good mood, and his answer was a bit flippant. “Yes, of course. The people of Earth love me. I’m very popular.”

Loki smirked slightly. “Let me rephrase that. Do you really think it’s a good idea to bring _me_ back to Earth?”

It was a valid question.

“Probably not, to be honest,” Thor said. He knew that Loki’s welcome was going to be far from warm. The people of Earth’s lives were short, but New York was barely a heartbeat ago even by their standards. “But I wouldn’t worry, brother. I feel like everything is going to work out fine.”

Loki smiled, though not with his eyes, and Thor squeezed his shoulder.

“I hope your optimism isn’t misplaced, though I fear it is,” Loki said.

“I’ll protect you from the big bad humans,” Thor said with a wink. Loki huffed in disgust and pinched his arm where his skin was exposed.

Honestly though, Thor wasn’t sure what Loki was afraid of. There may be a bit of a diplomatic headache, certainly, but Thor _was_ popular, and they were gods besides—a whole shipful. There wasn’t really anything Earth could do to stop them. It wasn’t like Loki to have any regard for humans’ capabilities at all.

“Come, though,” Thor said, slinging his arm over Loki's shoulder. “I'm parched to death after all that yammering. Let's get a drink.”

Loki stiffened under Thor's arm and Thor wondered if he overstepped his bounds, but it only took a second for Loki to relax and elbow Thor in the side.

“Alright,” Loki said , warmth in his voice, and Thor was so pleased that he squeezed Loki tighter until his brother was making exaggerated 'I can't breathe’ noises and, laughing, pushing him away.

*

One of the children was the first to fall sick.

It was inevitable with so many people living so closely together and breathing recycled air, bodies lacking in sunlight and nutrition and emotions stressed to the breaking point.

The girl’s name was Ingrid, and she took ill with a fever. By the time that Ingrid's mother let on that her daughter was sick, lesions had already started appearing on her trunk. The lesions let them know the name of their enemy: black fever, which everyone called Freya’s Jewels for the dark red cankers that glistened like rubies, filled with corruption.

It was a common enough illness on Asgard, and in fact Ingrid probably contracted it there before its destruction. It was a bacterial infection easily dealt with using the proper medication. Nobody had died from it in a very, very long time. So long, in fact, that people had forgotten to be wary of it.

When Ingrid started vomiting black blood, people remembered that they used to die from it.

When Ingrid’s little brother woke with a fever as well, there was a near panic.

Thor ordered the children quarantined and he brought Loki with him to meet with Eir. She’d been Asgard’s chief healer for longer than Thor had been alive and she’d been patching him and Loki both up since infancy; she probably knew more about their misspent youth than anyone besides Thor and Loki themselves, or maybe Heimdall, and Thor was incredibly grateful and relieved that she escaped Hela’s wrath and made it to the Statesman alive.

Her face was more lined than Thor remembered, and her hair a touch more gray, and though she smiled to see them her face was grim.

“I’m doing all that I can,” Eir said, “but without antibiotics I just don’t know if they’ll make it. I’d wager Ingrid has three days at most, and Sven five.”

“What are their chances?” Loki asked.

“Of survival with what I have here? Twenty percent, maybe. Of a full recovery, less than that. There is often a lingering inflammation of the brain that can cause cognitive impairment, or blindness—”

“We’ll have the entire ship searched,” Thor said. “Every room, every locker, every storage compartment. There may be a stray med kit, _something_ —”

“It’s slightly graver than a spare med kit, I’m afraid,” Eir said. “Black fever is highly contagious well before the lesions appear, and nobody knows how many people Ingrid might have infected before it was caught. It could be dozens. More. There are so few children left, and they’ve all been—playing together—” Eir put her hand over her mouth, too choked to continue.

Thor and Loki shared a look of horror behind her back. In all their lives, no matter how sick they’d gotten or how gruesomely they’d been injured, Eir had never been anything other than calmly stoic. To see her break down even this much rocked Thor to his core. And truly, the idea of losing their children after losing everything else was simply too much to bear.

“We’ll get you the medicine you need,” Loki told her, determination in his voice and sadness in his eyes, and Thor could have kissed him for it. “I swear it.”

“We’ll talk to the navigators,” Thor said to Loki after they took their leave. “There must be somewhere we can go for aid.”

They went straight to the navigators, who had nothing but bad news for them. Nidavellir was only a day away, but when the station was hailed they had no med supplies suitable for Asgardians. The next closest stop, a waystation, was weeks out.

Ingrid and Sven didn’t have weeks, they had days, and who knew how many more would fall ill in the interim. Loki must have seen the despair on Thor’s face, because he put his hand on Thor’s arm and the look that he gave him was full of understanding.

The waystation was the only option though, so Thor ordered the navigators to change course to make for it with all possible speed. Thor could only pray that there would be anybody left to save by the time they got there. How monstrously unfair, that they should survive a confrontation with the Goddess of Death herself only to be felled by an untidy collection of microbes.

“I’ll have the ship searched for supplies anyway,” Thor told Loki as they watched the navigators scurrying to punch in course corrections. “It can’t hurt anything.”

Loki made a noncommittal noise. He was worrying at one hand with the other and biting at his lower lip. Thor resisted the urge to take one of Loki’s hands in his own, kiss his fingers.

Thor went to bed that night heartsick. In the dark when he was supposed to be sleeping he felt the loneliness of space closing around him. In the cosmic scale, the ship really wasn’t that much smaller than Asgard itself had been. It certainly felt that way though, a speck of dust gliding through the infinite vastness, and Thor felt tiny and impotent and a more than a little helpless. He missed his mother and his home and a time where a simple illness was just that and not an extinction-level event. 

Loki’s breathing meant that he was probably still awake too, and here in this other world they’d carved out for themselves in their bed, Thor could finally let his hand seek Loki’s. He squeezed it tightly. 

Loki squeezed back.

“I don’t know what to do,” Thor whispered.

“If I tell you something,” Loki whispered back, his voice strained, and he gripped Thor’s hand so tightly that it hurt, “will you promise not to kill me?”

Thor turned his head to try and make Loki out in the dark. He was on his back, his hair a curly tumble all around his head and shoulders, and his eyes were squeezed shut. His brow looked pained. Serious.

“Brother, how can you even—”

“Promise me,” Loki hissed.

Thor was taken aback. “I promise I won’t kill you.”

“Or beat me, or electrocute me, or toss me out the airlock—”

“Enough,” Thor said, as gently as he could. There was a nervous flutter in his gut though. “Tell me.”

Loki swallowed and brought Thor’s hand to his breast and held it there. Thor felt his brother’s heart racing.

“Back on Asgard—when I went down into the vault—

—I took the Tesseract.”


	5. Chapter 5

“ _Loki_ ,” Thor said. His voice sounded pleading to his own ears. Loki was still clutching Thor’s hand to his chest. The implications of Loki’s simple statement were so many that Thor could hardly slow his mind down to settle on any of them. His mouth made the decision for him. “ _Why?_ ”

“I don’t know. Everything was moving so fast, I only had a moment. And I saw it, and—I thought it shouldn’t be left there—that I might—use it to bargain or—”

 _This is why Thanos has turned towards us,_ Thor realized, a little bitterly and with less surprise than he might have thought. _Because my brother is a magpie who collects shiny objects and can never leave well enough alone._

“And you didn’t tell me.”

Disappointment crawled down Thor’s throat, constricting it, and anger was hot on its heels. He pulled away from Loki and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He leaned over his knees and rubbed his hands up the back of his head, making his hair stick up, trying to calm the storm starting to simmer in his chest. He hated that this was happening, here, now, in their bed. In the place he’d been thinking of as their sanctum. He hated that Loki had been so afraid to tell him. With how Thor was struggling to contain his anger he wondered if Loki had been right to be afraid, and he hated that too.

Loki sat up behind him and started plucking nervously at the blankets.

“I can’t make it work,” Loki said. “I don’t have—I’m not strong enough. It needs a conduit. Like the one we used after New York—”

Thor concentrated on breathing. His fingertips sparked with electricity before he could get them under control, and from Loki’s intake of breath he saw it. Loki started babbling.

“Nidavellir is only a day away. I can go. _We_ can go. Take the Commodore. The Dwarves can forge us a conduit, I’m sure of it. They made the staff that Thanos gave me that had the Mind Stone in it. Then you can use it to travel anywhere you like, get the medicine we need. It can save us. Brother, please.” Loki was breathing hard.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you took it?” Thor asked. His voice was tight, controlled.

“I’m telling you now.”

“If the children hadn’t fallen sick, would you have ever told me at all?”

Loki was silent for a moment, plucking at the blankets, plucking, plucking, and Thor wanted to grab him and shake him. He balled his hands up instead and held the lightning inside of his clenched fists.

“I don’t know,” Loki said finally, his voice as small as Thor had ever heard it. 

They’d made so many strides lately, and now Thor was feeling nearly back to square one. Back to a place of mutual distrust, miscommunication, antagonism—Thor’s chest tightened, and a small arc of electricity jumped between his hands. 

“Brother, please,” Loki said again, a note of fear creeping in. “It can save us.”

There were so many things Thor could say. So many accusations he could fling, so much pain he could dredge up. But he saw no way that talking more right now would do anything other than make the situation deteriorate and delay them, because, Thor’s anger aside, Loki was right—the Tesseract _could_ save them.

“Get dressed, then,” Thor said, his voice low and rough. He still hadn’t looked back at Loki. He didn’t know if he could bear to right now. Either his anger would boil over or it would all melt away like snow in the warm spring rain, and both seemed intolerable. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

*

Loki scurried after his brother, two steps behind and to the right. Thor’s strides were long and angry and a cloud of static followed him down the hallway. Anxiety twisted Loki’s stomach into nauseous cramps. Thor hadn’t flown into a fiery rage the way Loki had thought he might, but this cold anger was almost worse. When Thor roared, Loki roared back; getting this silent treatment instead made Loki feel small and pathetic. Like he wasn’t even worth getting bothered over.

Thor was putting up with Loki right now, but once he had what he needed…

By the time they made it to the hangar where the Commodore was docked, Loki had made up his mind. They’d get their conduit and then Thor would go to get the medicine and Loki would take the Commodore and leave. Like he should have done before. Staying for as long as he had had been nothing more than foolish optimism. After the life Loki had led he was surprised he had any optimism left in him at all, but he supposed that proximity to Thor could instill it even in the worst of people.

Thor took the pilot’s seat and gave Loki a quick look, daring him to say something (perhaps remembering the last time they’d flown a craft together), but Loki just tightened his mouth and gestured at the chair. _It’s all yours._ They glided from the cavern of the hangar out into the void of space, for all their size like an atom detaching from a molecule. Thor flew wordlessly. His jaw was tight, and whenever he glanced at Loki he looked away quickly. Loki stayed silent. His thoughts chattered, though, as he could never seem to keep them from doing. 

He rubbed his finger on the edge of the dashboard and thought about the first time he was on this ship. In the weeks Loki had spent on Sakaar thinking that Thor was dead, he’d passed many fraught hours here on the Commodore. In the Grandmaster’s court it had been a choice between fighting, fucking, or dying, and Loki had calculated his odds and made his decision fairly quickly. This particular ship had been the Grandmaster’s personal favorite for his...parties.

For the most part Loki had been able to talk a big game rather than actually have to play it, but he’d ended up reluctantly participating more than once. His eyes flitted around the cabin. There, on the recessed couch, where he’d held the face of a beautiful young thing and kissed her, whispering words of strength in her ear while some brute with four arms had fucked her brutally from behind. Here, in the co-pilot’s chair, where he’d taken his mind to another place while he let the Grandmaster’s favored companion service him with his mouth while the Grandmaster watched with heavy-lidded eyes. There, on the central pedestal, where the Grandmaster had gleefully writhed with a beast composed mostly of great blue tentacles and then beckoned for a handful of his favorites (including Loki) to join in; declining hadn’t been an option.

Loki had been operating in a cloud of numb grief, then. He’d often been high on something, and the ship had been so different from how it was now, filled with a haze of smoke and musk, dark shadows and flickering pink and blue lights, thumping music, the stink of a score or more of alien bodies. So different that Loki had found it easy enough to divorce that memory from the stark well-lit interior they found themselves in now and to make this place his own hiding spot when they were on the Statesman.

Seeing Thor here now though was jarring. He was alive and well in the very place where Loki had mourned him the most.

Loki realized he hadn’t told Thor about that time at all, just as he hadn’t told Thor about most things that had happened to him. He wondered if Thor would even care to hear them. Probably not. It would just be another thing for him to look down on Loki about, anyway; that Loki had submitted himself over and over—to Thanos, the Black Order, the Grandmaster and his lackeys—rather than die fighting.

Although, Loki supposed he’d done that too.

Not that Thor knew that either.

 _It will be better for both of us if I leave,_ Loki told himself. _I’ll only disappoint Thor one more time instead of dragging it out for ages._ Loki stared at Thor’s profile for a long moment, and his long-fingered hands on the ship’s console, and Loki allowed himself to admire his brother’s beauty at least one last time. Some of Thor’s words came back to him.

_”I don’t want to be apart from you again, brother. Every cell of my body hates it.”_

Loki clutched his stomach and took himself to the back to lie down on one of the recessed couches. It would be another eighteen hours at least until they made it to Nidavellir. He put his back to Thor and tried to rest.

*

The great spinning rings of the Dwarven forge filled the window, rotating almost lazily around the burning heart of the neutron star that powered them. Thor piloted them deftly into the open docking bay. The Commodore settled with a soft jolt that matched the one in Loki’s gut.

A harried looking Dwarf with an electronic tablet met them as they exited. She was heads taller than either of them, but still greeted them with deference. Nidavellir had been a protectorate of Asgard since before Thor was born and the royal family was well recognized.

“Your Highness,” she said, bowing her head to Thor, then noticed Loki standing behind him. “Er, Highnesses. How may we be of service?”

“We would speak with King Eitri,” Thor said. “And I’m afraid it’s ‘Your Majesty’ now.”

She blinked in surprise, then nodded, and her fingers flew over the screen of her tablet. “Of course, Your Majesty. Forgive me, but I was one of the ones who answered your hail yesterday. What has happened to Asgard? Are you still in need of medicine? I don’t know that we have what you need—”

“Your concern is appreciated,” Thor said, “but I would speak with Eitri alone.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Her cheeks colored and she began to turn away. 

Thor’s tone softened. Loki was sure that only his sweet fool of a brother would think to comfort someone else in a situation like this.

“I didn’t mean to be harsh. Asgard is fallen,” Thor told her. “We are few, but hopefully with your people’s aid we will not be fewer.”

“Is it wise—” Loki began in an undertone, but snapped his mouth shut at a look from Thor. 

The Dwarf’s face looked stricken. “That is dark news indeed.” Her tablet buzzed at her and she sniffled and rubbed at her nose and looked down. “The King is on his way. Just a few moments.”

The King of the Dwarves arrived shortly. He towered over them, but the face that peered out from the wild dark tangle of hair and beard was kind.

“It’s been an age!” Eitri boomed. “How are you boys? Loki, I thought you were...well, obviously I was mistaken. How is your father? Thor, where is that marvelous hammer I made?”

“Eitri, my friend,” Thor said, wincing in a not-smile, “we have much to tell you.”

*

Eitri brought them to his study. The furniture was too large and the drinking implements were unmanageable without looking like a fool; Loki had no wish to have to lift a goblet the size of his head with both hands, like a toddler. So he let Thor perch himself awkwardly on a chair made for someone twice his size and deal with uncomfortable drinking rituals, and Loki himself paced the edges of the room.

He tried not to fiddle with things. It left him wringing his hands more often than not.

Eitri listened gravely as Thor relayed the tragedies of the past few weeks. It all sounded so stark, laid out like this. Not quite real. How could so much have happened in so little time? Surely at some point they would wake up in their beds at the palace, Asgard’s golden sun creeping across their faces, and have a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

“And so we need your help,” Thor was saying. “We have the Tesseract, but we can’t use it.”

“You need a conduit,” Eitri said.

“Precisely.”

Eitri scratched at the corner of his mouth and looked from Thor to Loki, appraisingly.

“Can I see it?”

Loki was standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed. Thor twisted around to give him a one-eyed look that Loki couldn’t read at all.

“Yes brother, let’s see it.”

Loki tried not to grimace, to keep his expression neutral.

“Alright.”

He looked down and took a breath, his hair falling to partially hide his face. He wished he could disappear behind it entirely. He extended his right arm into the air, fingers just so, and _called_.

The glowing blue cube housing the Tesseract materialized over his outstretched hand and came to rest lightly on his fingertips.

Loki breathed and didn’t look at Thor.

“Marvelous,” Eitri sighed. The Dwarf stood and walked over to Loki, his hand reaching for the cube. “May I?”

Loki offered it up wordlessly. Eitri spun it in his hands, examining it, his face lit in blue.

“The stone is inside, I take it?”

“Yes,” Loki said. “I wouldn’t touch it with your bare hands if I were you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Norns, you can feel the power flowing through you.”

Loki tightened his mouth in a not-smile. He hadn’t looked at Thor yet. He didn’t want to see.

Eitri appeared to be thinking out loud. “Since it’s meant for traveling, mainly, I’d think you want something fairly portable, yes? Nothing too unwieldy. A dagger? No, that’s a pain to hold onto. Jewelry, maybe? A ring?”

“Whatever you think is best,” Thor said. “A ring is fine.”

“It will have to grow and shrink to fit the hand of the wearer, obviously,” Eitri mused. “Hmm. We could make it more exclusive to use, forge a standard worthiness spell into it…”

Loki felt his cheeks burning. _Worthiness spells_. If he never heard of one again in his life it would be too soon. He’d spent so many useless centuries being judged and found wanting by a “standard worthiness spell” that he wanted to retch. He’d felt ambivalent about Eitri before, but now a rage was starting to creep in.

He was about to snatch the Tesseract back, snarl something unforgivably rude, but Thor spoke first.

“No worthiness spells,” Thor said firmly. “Thank you, but no.”

Surprised, Loki risked a quick glance at Thor, but his brother’s face was still unreadable. Was Thor getting better at this whole emotions business or was Loki getting worse?

“So can you help us?” Thor asked Eitri.

Eitri lowered the cube from where he’d been examining it close to his face. He smiled. “Yes.”

*

It was both awing and humbling to watch the full force of a star focused and tamed into a controllable tool. Loki wished he had such power at his disposal. When the smiths were done, the cube was gone, and in its place was a ring of dull-looking dark metal. The band was narrow, and the space gem sat housed inside a swirling filigree cage. No, it wasn’t sitting—when Loki looked at it more carefully he saw that there was a thin sliver of space all around it and that no part of it actually touched the metal. It was floating.

“Marvelous,” Eitri said again. Loki wondered if he knew any other adjectives.

“How can we pay you?” Thor asked. He took the ring from where it rested in Eitri’s palm and ran his thumb over the filigree.

“There’s no need,” Eitri said. “I would never ask payment to save the lives of children. We owe fealty to Asgard, besides. And it’s not every day I get to forge something so extraordinary. No. Consider it a gift.”

“We thank you,” Loki said. “For everything.”

“Asgard will not forget the kindness you have done us,” Thor said. Loki sighed internally. Eitri had been offering them this debt-free but here Thor went turning it into favors owed. He still had much to learn about ruling. “But we must take our leave. Time is of the essence.”

“Of course,” Eitri said. “May Fate smile upon you both.”

*

Thor and Loki went back to the Commodore and Loki finally ventured speaking directly to his brother for the first time they had left for Nidavellir.

“You should try Vanaheim,” Loki said. “They’ll have what we need. I’ll take the Commodore and meet you back at the Statesman.”

He had actually made up his mind to try Xandar. There were a lot of opportunities there, especially for one who could shapeshift as Loki could. He’d be able to start over, as much as that was possible, and maybe lose himself well enough that Thor (and maybe Thanos) couldn’t find him. Not that he really expected Thor to come looking, but stranger things had happened.

“No.”

Thor hit the button to close the door behind them, and they were alone in the Commodore’s main cabin.

“Pardon me?” Loki said when it didn’t seem like Thor was going to speak further.

“I said no.”

Loki stared at Thor, at a loss, then spread his hands. “What, then?”

“If I go to Vanaheim without you, you’ll take this ship and then I’ll never see you again.”

“I don’t know what you’re nattering on about—”

Thor sighed. “Brother. You’re still too predictable. You always try to run from your problems. No. I’ll not let you go.”

Loki bristled at this, and the irritation was a welcome change from all the moping he’d been doing. “Who are you to say what I can and can’t do—”

“Your King?”

Thor’s tone was annoying, not serious, and Loki’s mouth twisted and he rolled his eyes.

“Your brother?” Thor tried. 

Loki scoffed. Thor had figured him out though, so there was no point in pretending anymore.

“Give it up, Thor,” Loki said. “You don’t want me around and you know it. We tried, these last few weeks, but it can’t work. A day ago you were ready to rip me apart with your bare hands.”

“A day ago I was angry,” Thor agreed, “but then I sat with my anger long enough, and I realized it wasn’t anger at all, but grief wearing a mask.”

Loki had not been expecting this level of introspection and poetry to come out of his brother and he was incredulous. “Grief?”

“Yes, grief. It seems I’ve room for few other emotions, lately.” Thor paused and ran his hand up the back of his hair, rueful-looking. “We trusted each other, once, and I thought we were coming to do so again, and I was upset that it seemed that I was wrong. But I wasn’t wrong. You did trust me. You told me about Thanos and you told me about the Tesseract, and maybe it wasn’t the way that I would have done it, but you’re not me, you’re you. And when it mattered, you did the right thing. The way you almost always actually do.”

Loki’s chest grew tighter with every word, aching. Damn Thor. Damn him straight to the coldest pits. How dare he play on Loki’s emotions like this—

“If you actually, truly want to go you can,” Thor said. “But I’m not angry anymore and...and I wish you would stay. With me.”

Loki opened his mouth to spit invective, to tell Thor that he was a boor and an ass and to tell him in no uncertain terms that _yes_ , Loki would go, and he would do so happily, because he was not here to simply dance on the end of Thor’s string at his whims, but Loki surprised himself by speaking from the heart instead.

“Are all these pretty words supposed to mean anything? How am I to stay, when I fear that every time I misstep according to _your_ morals that you’ll rain violence down upon my head? I’m trying to be _more_ , isn’t that what you wanted? Can’t you see that? I’m twisting myself into knots all for _you_. I’m trying _so hard_ —do you have any idea—”

“I do.”

Loki was completely rigid, stiff so that he didn’t tremble, and Thor closed his hands around Loki’s upper arms.

“I’m trying too,” Thor said. “I’m sorry that I’m so shit at it. But I want you to stay. Even if we don’t always understand each other, or hurt each other. We’re...we’re all we have left. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

It was too much to process. Loki shook his head and looked away.

“It’s just words,” Loki whispered. He knew all about false words.

“This isn’t words,” Thor said. He reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out the Tesseract ring. Gently, he took Loki’s hand and pressed the ring into his palm. He closed Loki’s fingers around it, then brought Loki’s closed hand up to his mouth and kissed his knuckles. “This is yours now.”

Loki gaped at Thor in shock, for once all of his own words gone. Was this actually happening? Did Thor really just do that? In all his wildest dreams Loki never, _never_ imagined that Thor would not only forgive his taking of the Tesseract, but also _entrust him with it_. It was overwhelming. Loki felt tears welling. He wanted to fall to the ground and cover himself with his arms, but somehow he stayed upright. How did Thor have the power to cut him so deeply and yet also have the power to heal as well? Loki hated it even as he loved Thor desperately; maybe therein lay part of the answer. 

“Do the right thing,” Thor said, clasping Loki’s fist with both of his hands. His eye was fixed on Loki. “I trust you.”

Loki disentangled his hand from Thor’s grasp. He slipped the Tesseract onto the ring finger of his left hand and then looked back up at Thor. He almost said something, but he hardened the corners of his mouth instead.

He disappeared in a flash of blue light.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now back to our regularly scheduled programming

_”I make grave mistakes all the time,”_ Thor had said blithely to Surtur. It felt like a century ago he’d uttered the words, though it had only been weeks. The return trip to the Statesman felt like it took a century as well. He had plenty of time to replay the stunned look on Loki’s face when he’d handed him the Tesseract and the tightness of his expression right before he’d disappeared. Thor could only hope that he hadn’t just proven his own words true yet again.

When he finally guided the Commodore back into its hangar on the Statesman, Heimdall and Brunnhilde were there waiting for him with impassive faces. No doubt Heimdall had seen him coming.

“Loki,” Thor said by way of greeting. “Has he returned with the medicine?”

“You should have informed us you were leaving,” Heimdall said.

“There wasn’t time,” Thor said. Heimdall only lifted one reproachful eyebrow. Feeling chastised out of all proportion, Thor tried to defend himself. “I didn’t leave us leaderless. We established the chain of command at the first council meeting. Which you know, because you were there.”

Brunnhilde was giving him a supremely unimpressed look now as well, her arms crossed over her chest, and Thor wondered with a certain amount of exasperated fondness how he had ended up with the two most insubordinate subordinates in existence.

“The people were on the verge of mass panic,” Brunnhilde said. “It was all The Watcher and I could do to calm them. Not just that you disappeared with no word, but your brother as well—”

“Loki,” Thor said again. “Please tell me. _Has he returned with the medicine?_ ”

“Yes,” Heimdall said, and Thor heaved out a sigh of relief.

“And the children?”

“They yet live,” Heimdall said.

Overcome with emotion, Thor grasped Heimdall’s shoulder. Heimdall finally cracked the smallest of smiles and Thor pulled him into a back-slapping embrace, his heart momentarily light as a feather. They would not face more heartbreak this day, at least.

“I’m sorry for behaving more like the Prince I was than the King I ought to be,” Thor said when he pulled away, blinking the wetness from his eyes.

“Sorry doesn’t mean much,” Brunnhilde said, though she was smiling too. “Just don’t do it again.”

“Where is my brother?” Thor asked. He wanted to see him himself.

The smiles died on their faces and Heimdall and Brunnhilde shared a look that Thor didn’t care for in the slightest. Brunnhilde clapped Thor on the arm and opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and patted his arm again.

“What is this about?” Thor asked Heimdall as Brunnhilde left, shaking her head.

“My King,” Heimdall started. “ _Thor_.” He paused, and turned from Thor slightly to stare off into nowhere. It would have been disconcerting in anyone else. “Not many would recognize what Loki was wearing on his finger when he returned. What it does. What it means, especially in light of what we both know regarding Thanos. You have put us all in danger.”

“I fear no Titan,” Thor said. He unconsciously brought his hand to his hip to touch Mjolnir’s handle, and instead touched nothing but air.

Heimdall’s eyes snapped back to him. “You should. He has gained the power gem from Xandar.”

The news sent Thor reeling. “I thought the Nova Corps had it.”

“The Nova Corps is no more.”

“Shit,” Thor said succinctly. “Does anyone else know?”

“No,” Heimdall said. “Brunnhilde knows about the Tesseract but not Xandar. Though I think you should name her General and bring her in.”

Thor laughed, a little bitterly. “We have barely two score warriors left to us, and a few of the Sakaarian gladiators. The Asgardian army is no more.”

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten that you already had a list of all our able-bodied fighters delivered to her.”

Thor found himself reaching for Mjolnir again so he scrubbed his hand up the back of his hair instead. Norns, but he still wasn’t used to the feeling.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said. “I just don’t see how that makes us an army. We’re refugees now, not empire builders.”

“Brunnhilde has more experience than you know,” Heimdall said. Thor sighed. He didn’t want Heimdall to be right.

“We need to tell Loki as well. You still haven’t told me where he is.”

Heimdall crossed his arms. “I’ve been mostly silent until now, but… Do you think it wise to trust your brother after all he has done?”

Thor gave Heimdall a tight-lipped smile. 

“If I don’t trust him, then who will?” _He needs **someone** on his side._

“You are not boys any longer,” Heimdall said. “And Loki’s mischief has grown far past youthful folly.” 

“My friend, you may see more than most of us, but you don’t see everything.”

This was the closest to an argument that Thor had ever had with Heimdall. Part of him wished simply to acquiesce; Heimdall’s support had never been anything less than total before, and that it wasn’t right now sat heavy on Thor’s heart. Heimdall had been his father’s most trusted advisor. Surely his counsel was wise, well honed after millennia at Odin’s side? Who was Thor to think he knew better? 

But Did Thor want to follow in Odin’s footsteps?

Thor closed his eye and saw his father fade away, nothing left of him in this world but the consequences of his lies and the weight of his expectations and a swiftly dissipating cloud of golden light—and then, swimming into focus through it, his brother’s stricken face. 

“Loki,” Thor said to Heimdall once again, gently and expectantly.

Heimdall shook his head and pointed.

*

Loki was in the makeshift sick bay, directing volunteers this way and that, having them organize and stow away several entire pallets full of medical supplies. Clearly he’d gotten more than just antibiotics. There were boxes full of other types of medicine as well, and first aid supplies, bandages and IV equipment, even what looked like a surgery kit.

“You could just do it yourself instead of making them do it,” Thor teased lightly, coming up to stand beside his brother. He went to squeeze Loki’s shoulder just as Loki turned away to berate a young man for being clumsy, and Thor let his hand drop to his side.

“What’s the fun in that?” Loki said, turning back towards him and giving him a false smile with too many teeth. “No words of welcome for me, brother?”

Thor sighed. Loki was in a thorny mood, and Thor was about to make it thornier.

“I need to speak with you privately,” he said, and looked meaningfully at the door leading to a small supply room and away from the prying eyes and ears of the volunteers.

“Wonderful. After you, then, My King,” Loki said with mock gallantry, gesturing Thor to go ahead.

“I don’t know what you’re going to yell at me about this time—” Loki started as the door swished shut behind them.

“Why do you always assume the worst of me?”

“It’s served me well in the past.”

Thor pinched the bridge of his nose and resisted the urge to rub at the edge of his eyepatch yet again. Loki’s words weren’t necessarily untrue. He really didn’t want to get into an argument right now, though.

“It actually has nothing to do with you, believe it or not,” Thor said. He decided to just spit it out. “I spoke with Heimdall on the way here. Thanos has the power gem.”

“Oh,” Loki said faintly. Then, emphatically, “ _Shit_.”

Thor let out a bark of laughter. “That’s exactly what I said.”

Loki’s words poured out in a rush. “We need to move. Quickly. He’ll be after this one next, you know he will, he’ll be after me, he hasn’t forgotten how I failed him, he hasn’t—”

“We don’t know that he’ll come here next,” Thor said, cutting him off. “He’s closer to Knowhere than here. But I agree we need to move. We’re sitting ducks right now. Can the ring move the whole ship?”

Loki twisted the ring on his finger and started pacing, his cape flaring out behind him. He was obviously shaken by the news, but not nearly as badly as he had been the first time, and for that Thor was grateful. 

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to hold a portal that large,” Loki admitted. “But I could hold a smaller one. Big enough to get us all through it. But where would we go? Somewhere with an army—”

“Earth was already the destination and I see no reason to change it.”

“They have two other gems there already.”

“Exactly. Thanos only has one. If we have three…”

“It’s risky,” Loki said. “Three against one gives us a chance, but it also might attract him like a fly to honey.”

“I’m full of bold moves lately,” Thor said. “Why is he doing this, anyway? What purpose does it serve?” Reports had been coming in for several years of Thanos’s rampage through the stars, wiping out half of every world that he visited, leaving nothing but devastation and chaos in his wake. He didn’t even seem to want to rule over the people he ruined. It seemed senseless. Destruction for destruction’s sake.

“He loves death,” Loki said, the corners of his mouth downturned. “He claims a more noble purpose, but that’s the crux of it. This is his love letter to a universe made over in death’s image.”

“With half its people gone and the other half drowned in despair.”

“The state of the living doesn’t interest him.”

“Why does he only kill half?”

“Why not?” Loki said, laughing with no humor. “It probably pleases him to feel like the fair and impartial arbiter of mortality, even though he’s anything but. What he’s done—what he did—” Loki’s hand closed over his heart and he swallowed thickly.

“We’ll destroy him,” Thor said firmly. “I swear it.”

Loki barked out another humorless laugh. “Of course you do. Like it’s so easy. We couldn’t even destroy our sister.”

“We have time to plan this time.”

Loki scoffed.

“How quickly can we move?” Thor asked. “Could you make your portal within the hour?”

“The hour?” Loki said, taken aback. “I don’t know...Are you sure? I mean...this will take some planning, yes? Surely you can’t gather everyone that quickly.”

“I can if you can.”

Loki looked nervous for some reason, and Thor instinctually reached for him to put his hand on his neck. Loki twisted away before his hand could connect, and for the second time Thor let his arm drop to his side. Something gnawed at the back of his mind.

“I can’t,” Loki said curtly. “You’ll have to give me more time than that.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t,” Loki snapped. “I’ll need half a day at the least.”

“Why?” Thor asked again.

“Oh will you just stop!” Loki cried, throwing his arms in the air. “I need half a day and that’s the end of it.”

Thor finally realized what was niggling at him, and he reached for Loki again, and this time he didn’t let Loki worm away from him. Just as expected, his hand passed through his brother’s image in a glimmer of green and gold. Thor cursed. Loki’s face fell into a resigned mask.

“Why?” Thor asked for the third time, roughly.

“I can explain—”

Thor cut him off with a growl and hit the wall in impotent anger.

“I thought it might be different this time—”

“It _is_ different,” Loki insisted. “Although you getting upset like this is why I’m not actually here right now.”

“You not being here right now is why I’m upset.”

Loki pursed his mouth into a thin line. “I refuse to be responsible for your temper any longer,” he said tightly. “Or a victim of it. You can listen to me or not. I dropped these supplies off and then I left again, but I’ll be back. I swear it. Within half a day. Which you may have surmised if you’d actually been listening to me just now.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I assume the worst, remember?” Loki said, and then his face twisted into a sad self-deprecating smile. “I suppose I wanted to surprise you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll see in half a day,” Loki said, and then he was gone.

*

Thor spent the half day in a flurry of activity. He met with Eir first to make sure the children were improving, then had another hurried talk with Heimdall, followed by one where he brought Brunnhilde into confidence as well, and then an emergency council meeting. He didn’t really have time to think deeply about everything Loki had said, but he kept hearing _’you getting upset like this is why I’m not actually here right now’_ on a loop in the back of his mind and remembering how he was ready to fight Loki barehanded in that field on Norway, remembering leaving Loki on the floor of that hangar in Sakaar. The latter had felt like justice at the time, tricking the trickster, but _gods_ , what had Thor been thinking? He could only blame grief and confusion and fear, but in retrospect they seemed poor excuses. It was something he might have done as a child. As a man, he should have known better. His brother did a fine job of pushing himself away from everyone who loved him; he didn’t need Thor to help him do it.

At least Thor was starting to recognize this in himself. It was a shame that it took losing so much, including an eye, to finally make him see.

Thor held his feelings at bay though, shoved them into the corner, threw a rug over them. He needed to be the King right now. Maybe this was why his father had hid so many things. No time, no energy, shunt it off to deal with it later—then never actually deal with it.

Thor resolved that he would deal with it. Just maybe after they got to Earth safely.

Funny that he used to aspire to be like Odin, and now he was coming to realize that he aspired to be anything but.

Thor sent the council members off with orders to gather up all the people and supplies that they had left. Rounding everyone up was something that Thor would have tasked his friends with in the past. In fact, when he started delegating, he nearly called out for Fandral before he remembered himself. It was yet another pain to sweep under the rug, ignore, delay. There would be time later.

There would.

They began gathering everyone in the largest hold on the ship. It was the one they’d used for Thor’s slapdash coronation. In truth, it was good to have more than an hour. Though their numbers were few comparatively speaking, getting several thousand people to do anything in a timely fashion was a futile endeavor. 

Loki came back when Thor took five minutes for himself to go back to their room and gather his meager belongings. He was rummaging through the nightstand when the room suddenly started glowing blue. When Thor turned, a hole in space was opening in midair, and two people stepped out.

“Thor!” Sif cried out. She was across the room in two strides and embracing Thor in a back-thumping hug.

“Sif,” Thor choked out, frozen in shock, and when he regained control of his limbs he embraced her back so fiercely that it might have cracked the ribs of a weaker person. “What—how—”

Loki was standing at the end of the bed, fidgeting with his hands, standing straight as a blade.

“I sent her away,” he said. “Her and Heimdall. They always could see through me. I sent her away—”

“And you brought her back,” Thor said. He found himself blinking back tears for the second time that day.

“Your eye! Your hair! You must tell me everything that’s happened,” Sif said, clasping Thor’s arms. “I know very little.”

“There will be time later,” Thor said, pulling himself together. “Oh, my friend, I am so happy to see you.”

“I as well,” Sif said, smiling. Norns, but he had missed her face. He had thought her dead on Asgard along with nearly everyone else. His joy at seeing her alive and well and _smiling_ , of all things, filled his heart to bursting.

Loki made to move away from their happy little tableau, but Thor snagged him—the flash of relief he felt when Loki was solid and warm was stronger than he might have expected—and pulled him into a crushing embrace as well. “Thank you,” he said into Loki’s ear. “And I’m sorry. This was the best surprise you could have given me.”

“Oh, now I get a thank you,” Loki muttered, but he hugged Thor back. His fingers dug into Thor’s shoulders where his armor met his skin, his grip a little desperate. Thor wanted to hold him for longer. To talk to him about everything that needed to be said. But time was wasting and they needed to move.

“Come, both of you,” Thor said. “We have a people to relocate.”


End file.
